'Objects in the Mirror': An African teen's place in the world is made grippingly clear

At one point in "Objects in the Mirror," the gripping story of an African refugee who somehow makes it out of a Guinean refugee camp that held 90,000 hopefuls in a petri dish of malaria, dysentery, cholera and violent government oppression, a young man stands on a bucolic beach and quietly stares at the Indian Ocean.

"It's hard to believe," he says, "that this place exists on the same earth as that other place back home."

It's not the most poetic line to be found in Charles Smith's new play, which opened at the Goodman Theatre on Monday night under the direction of Chuck Smith, and that moved me greatly not just with its unshakable compassion for its dislocated protagonist, but with its firm determination to reflect the agonizing complexities of identity, trust and loyalty that beset every refugee. But that line does sum up with alacrity the absurdity of the situation wrought by theoretically evolved humans.

In one corner of the world, marauding young men with machetes wander around maiming the noncompliant; in another, the sun sets as happy children play quietly in the sand. Whether you get to spend your youth in the one or the other depends entirely on accident of birth. And whether you get out of the less-desirable scenario, should you be unlucky enough to start there as a kid, is dependent not only on your courage and force of personal will, but on many other factors beyond your control.

Does an adult love you? How much? Will that adult risk everything for you? And then even if all of that is in the affirmative, you still have to find a destination, a place where you can resettle. You still have to find a sympathetic home — on the macro level of governmental admission, for sure, but also on the micro level of finding kind people to stand with you on that beach. And as we well know, all of that is very much subject to the political whims of the moment.

For our world exists in a constant state of furious debate over how much those who feel like they have struggled for what they have should be willing to give away — especially when the potential donors number in the tens, if not the hundreds, of overwhelming millions.

"Objects in the Mirror" is not the obvious play about refugees; it does not merely restate our ethical obligation, nor does it spend time condemning those anxious to shut the gates.

And the playwright makes very clear that those who want to help refugees settle in a new country have to pay a price for any attempts at surrogate fatherhood — helping refugees who've learned along the way not to trust with ease is far from easy. Young refugees make mistakes, not unlike young native-born Americans. So do older refugees. All of this has to be understood, and yet often is not present in dramatic works on this subject. It is very much part of the landscape here.

There is a downside to Smith's choice — the lack of other characters means that the play inevitably falls into the descriptive narrative rather than the present-tense dramatic, especially in the first act. Rather than see things happen to Shedrick and John as they desperately try to make the right choices, we hear them talk about their experiences to each other. It's jarring at first, and bothersome. But as their journey wends along, you also come to see the upside of that choice.

This small cast inhabits Riccardo Hernandez's overwhelmingly vast visual landscape on the Goodman stage — a huge but sparse set that you'd most usually associate with epic productions teeming with actors (Smith has written such plays in the past). Here, Hernandez's design, aided by Mike Tutaj's projections and John Culbert's unflinching lights, shrinks and minimizes the nomadic and stateless humans whose story is being told; it is surely an intentional use of such contrast and, at times, is quite dazzlingly effective. It is a visual portrait of jet-fueled dislocation and migration that you do not have to have been a refugee to have felt.

Chuck Smith (no relation to the playwright and a whisperer of an artist), has directed scores of shows; this really is among his best work. He is using an all-Chicago cast and the acting in this production is blisteringly good. Kyri, whom I've been watching for a while in smaller roles and who is making his Goodman debut, is terrific — vulnerable, honest and yet also confounding when the script so demands. Add 10 percent more confidence and adolescent force, he'd be a revelation and give the veteran actor Gilmore even more to fight against. In the play, Charles Smith brings up the homophobia that still is routine in Africa — and Gilmore is determined to show us that side of a man who has walked through hell and back to get his nephew out of harm's way.

Gilmore invariably forges colorful characters — he is often cast in such eclectic, secondary, meandering roles — but here he's the flawed, patriarchal force of the drama, and he finds all of the discipline and power he needs. Mojekwu, meanwhile, is unstinting as a mother as imperfect as she is loving, and Arzell's Zaza, to whom life sends a lot of tough blows, is moving, too, in a quiet kind of way.

You never quite know what kind of man Kitley is playing, you never quite trust his kindness, which is the way it should be, for it is the timeless lot of the refugee fleeing oppression. You can't get out of these situations without trusting the self-interested. And it is always wise to assume everyone has an angle, even when they mean only good.

Shedrick Yarkpai, incidentally, really exists. Smith didn't change his name to tell his story. If you see this piece — and by all means take a privileged teen or two with you — you'll understand why that choice was so important.

A version of this article appeared in print on May 10, 2017, in the Arts + Entertainment section of the Chicago Tribune with the headline "African teen's place in the world made clear in unflinching drama" —
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